


two against the world

by circus (orphan_account)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cutting, Gen, M/M, Other, Self Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-17
Updated: 2011-09-17
Packaged: 2017-10-23 19:55:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/254276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/circus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was like reliving that night again - how long ago was it? Five, six years ago?</p>
            </blockquote>





	two against the world

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Batman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Batman/gifts).



**i.** Dean escaped from the motels around midnight.  
Nobody ever noticed.  
Nobody, that is, except for Sam.  
But Dean didn’t know that, though. If he did, he wouldn’t. But he didn’t, so he would.

 **ii.** Dean had trouble sleeping, these days. It was always nightmares. The same nightmare, over and over again. The yellow-eyed demon pointing a gun to his father. The demon, holding the gun. To his father.

His father always looked calm, desperate, happy, angry, prepared, worried. The expression in his eyes was always a mixture of paradoxical statements, but the last thing to flicker across his face was always relief. Everytime he dreamed, it always looked as if his father was relieved to die.

 _Relieved._ To leave Dean. To leave Sammy. But this was a nightmare. Didn’t have to be true. Seriously, it probably wasn’t. Just a… just  a recurring nightmare that provided a simple, believable explanation as to what had happened to John Winchester that day.

Dean squeezed his eyes shut, and rolled onto his side. He thought of talking to Sammy but that wouldnt work. Couldn’t let the bitch in on how he was feeling. _Gameface,_ Dean thought to himself. _Gameface, gameface._

  
 **iii.** “No matter what happens, Dean, never let your weakness win.” John chucked another branch into the fire as father and son sat outside, the sun setting on the hills in the distance.

“But sometimes your weakness does win, Dad. Everyone is just human. We’re hunters but we’re not fighting machines. That’s why we have weaknesses in the first place,” Dean piped up.

John smiled at him. “Clever boy.” He didn’t say anything more for a while. Dean edged a little closer to the first, toasting his marshmallow. “Gameface,” John finally said. “That’s the best you can do. Put your gameface on. Like in poker. Don’t show your emotions. And most of all, don’t let your _weakness_ make you show your emotions.”

Dean was silent for a while, too, as he let his marshmallow burn to ashes. “What if your weakness is a person, Dad?”

“Don’t let the person know when they hurt you. Their reaction’s not worth anything,” John answered at once, as if he’d asked that question himself millions of times.

Dean stared at his hands and thought. _Sammy is worth my life._ He was about to frown when he thought quietly, _So is Dad._ So he didn’t frown. Couldn’t let a weakness know his emotions. _Gameface._

  
 **i.** Sammy knew where Dean was going. The nearest highway, under the nearest street lamp. John was snoring - sleeping soundly - as first Dean, then Sam, crept out of bed.

Sam was always two minutes behind. He had it all perfectly timed. Dean slipped from pavement to pavement and from wall to shadow to tree, and Sam quietly followed suit.

Sam knew what Dean was going to do and he knew Dean wouldn’t stop, no matter what Sam said or did, so he had to settle on watching his big brother from across the street, looking out in case he did something stupid. Something stupider than what he was already doing.

And as painful as watching was, experiencing it was probably worse. Because Dean…

 **ii.** Dean couldn’t believe it, after all these years, after supposedly growing up from old, wretched habits - he, Dean -

 **i.** Dean cut himself _ **.**_

 **ii.** It was reviving, to open up his sleeve, and look at the veins across his arm, under the sky, bathed in moonlight but no-one there to see.

 **i.** Dean liked sharp glass. He liked picking up a rock, throwing it at an old junked car’s window and picked up the shards. He liked it because picking up the glass cut him softly at first, in strokes of transparency, leaving trails of red silk behind. It was like an appetizer, watching the scarlet lines draw across his palm, feeling the sting of the wind on his hand. Dean ignored it. He had more important things in front of him. His bare arm, for one.

 **ii.** It was dreamlike, almost, rolling up his sleeve. The streetlight was replaced by moonlight and the shard was replaced by his Swiss knife, but it still felt good. Still felt the same. The excitement - the dull, thudding excitement and then the pain that pierced through his soul like a sharp reprimand, filled with remorse and a reminder that he was living, and tinged with regret that he was still living.

He liked the sight of it, the feel of it - the blood trickling down his arm, tickling his hair and glistening, almost silver in the night.

 **i.** And Dean smiled, fascinated, by the pain, and how the anger at himself was waning, ebbing away and leaving him like a wave recedes and leaves a beach dry. He was going through pain, so that took away some of the blame, right?

Sam, from behind the garbage bin, bit his knuckle to stop himself from yelling. He knew why Dean was doing all this and he knew it was better than Dean killing himself. He knew. But his brother was grinning like a lunatic at the sight of his own blood, how could he - he could.  
 _Breathe,_ Sam thought. _Calm._

 **iv.** “Alright, Sammy,” Dean breathed in his brother’s ear. “Remember, in the face of everything, you have to remain calm. Don’t let anything catch you by surprise. Dad told me that on my first hunt,” he added.

Sam narrowed his eyes. “Dad is always with you on your firsts.”

Dean gritted his teeth in annoyance.  
“Think about what I said, Sammy. Calm.”

And for once, Sam did what he was told.

 _Calm,_ he thought to himself, as he pulled out his father’s journal and began to read the incantations as Dean spread out the cloth and lit the candles.

 _Calm,_ he thought, as the candles, wavered, and winked out.

 _Calm,_ he thought, as the spirit formed over the gravestone and narrowed its eyes at them.

 _Calm,_ he yelled at himself as the he threw the flaming branch of elder as the spirit broke away from the circle of candles.

 **i.** “Calm,” Sam breathed, nostrils flared.

 **ii.** “Calm,” Sam whispered from behind the tree trunk as he saw, once more, that glint in Dean’s eyes that was Dean and that was not Dean and that was intoxicating his big brother and taking over him.

 **iii.** “Dad, would you count family as a weakness?” Dean had asked, some days later.  
“Always,” John’s voice was icy and cut through Dean’s ears like a knife. _Gameface_ , Dean thought, and nodded, face stoic.

 **i.** Dean reached for another piece of grass, bigger and more triangular in shape. It had some bluish brown paint on it. Bluish brown, like Sammy’s eyes, only Sammy’s eyes were prettier, they were prettier than anything else in the world, Sammy’s soul always talked out of them, and Sammy was his weakness.

And he raised the glass shard in his hand, slick with blood, to the lamp, and looked straight at it.

He couldn’t think straight anymore.  
“You’re my weakness,” Dean told the glass. The glass caught the moonlight and reflected it for a second. Then his hand shook a little and the reflection winked out.

“You’re my damned weakness and I am damned. _Sick._ Of my damned gameface. I’m going to end this, Sammy. I swear. Today, I’m - “

  
Sam didn’t really get what Dean was saying, but registered ‘weakness’, a glass shard the size of his fist and Dean’s unbuttoned shirt. “Goddamn you, jerk,” he growled.

 **ii.** He remembered this. This feeling. This situation. The blood, of course. The way the knife glinted - like a shard had, once. Dean frowned. That night hadn’t ended well, but his memory was fuzzy. He couldn’t think properly. He needed to do this. Needed to feel the coolness of the metal against his neck…

 **i.** “You _SHIT_!”  
Dean dropped the shard, as if slapped.  
“You fucking _jerk._ ”  
 _Sammy,_ he thought, dazed and airy. _Don’t let him see you like this. Gameface. Gameface for Sammy boy._

 **ii.** “No, Dean. Not again,” Sam’s voice spoke from behind him, and Dean was hugged so tightly that he couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. He clung onto the Swiss knife as Sam wrestled with him to get it, and in the end, broken, Dean let him win. And the night rushed back to him.

 **i.** Dean’s eyes opened blearily ten minutes later, in a tub. There was a towel coming down on him and it had Chaerin Hospital embossed in blue on the side.

His eyes travelled up to discover an ashen Sam, staring holes into the wall opposite him, befor the towel went on his face and began wiping him over.

“Motherfucker,” Sam half-sobbed.

“Hey, Sammy…”

“No, Dean, you’re not sorry, don’t try to feed me that shit.”

Sam washed the towel, wrung the brown-red off it into the sink and placed it over Dean’s hand.

 _Alright, say something else, then._

“How long have you known?”

“I don’t know, forever,” Sam shrugged it off and began patting his slitted forearm, arms twitching.

“You’re scared of blood,” Dean grinned. “Pussy.”

“I’m _disgusted_ with you,” Sam’s teeth were gritted.

Dean didn’t have anything to say, except for, _Well that’s obvious_ , but that wasn’t the perfect moment to say that. So he let his younger brother, his weakness, dab at his cuts and wrap them in gauze.

“I’m - I’m not mad,” Dean blurted.

  
Sam was silent, but his hands were friendly against his forehead as he placed gauze on it. _Wait, he’d slit his forehead? He didn’t remember that._

“This…” Sam took a deep breath before continuing. “This never happened. Okay? You drank too much tonight, and - “

“And you know _why_ I drank, Sammy?” Dean’s voice suddenly rose.

“It’s the only way out of the guilt. I’m guilty, Sammy. I’m _guilty_. I could have saved lives yesterday. I could have killled it before it had killed _three more_ people. I _could_ have but I didn’t. I’m guilty and worthless. And don’t tell me not to say that about myself. Because I don’t give a fuck, Sammy, not a single flying _fuck_.”

And Sam helped him out of the tub, quietly. Dean didn’t seem to see him. He just leaned on Sam and stared dead ahead, eyes glazed over.

That was how they reaced the motel, Dean leaning on Sam, Sam with his arm around Dean’s waist and Dean’s around Sam’s shoulder, and they stumbled quietly into the room.

John was still asleep, and Sam glared at his father’s sleeping figure as he lowered his brother onto his bed and turned to leave for his own, but Dean yanked him.  
“Dean,” Sam hissed aganst Dean’s shirt, trying to claw his way out of Dean’s grasp.  
” _Sammy, please_.” And the desperation in Dean’s barely audible voice made him stay.

He didn’t know how long they spent like that. Sam’s face buried in Dean’s collar and Dean’s shoulder shaking into Sam’s hair and Sam felt wet on his forehead and squeezed his eyes shut and held his big brother and Dean wiped Sam’s forehead from time to time and sniffed and they both felt so estranged from the world, so lonely and so comfortable and together… because it had always been that way.

 **ii.** As Sam lead Dean back to their motel room, Dean’s arm aroun his waist and Sam’s around his shoulders, Dean sighed.

“I’m not sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“Really?”

“No, but yeah.”

“Hey, Sammy…”

“Not now, Dean, we have to get you cleaned up first.”

It was like reliving that night again - how long ago was it? Five, six years ago?

Sam patted at his arms with a sponge this time, and the gauze was accompanied with some disinfectant liquid now. When Sammy had finally finished on him, he was given a glass of water with some painkiller tablets or something and Dean took everything quietly, a second time, and then Sammy helped to his bed, a second time, and Dean pulled on his hand, a second time, and they lay like that quietly for eternity, a second time, and felt like that again, a second time.

Of being alone, but with Sammy, with his weakness, alone in the dark, with a light, his Sammy, and it felt right, as Sam’s tired tears soaked into his collar this time and Dean’s eyes remained dry and roved the ceiling. _He’d gotten better at the gameface._

And he couldn’t cry, not when Sammy was with him.  
He liked the feeling.  
Just them. Alone.  
Two against the world.


End file.
